Fall Crafts

Labor Day weekend I always start wanting to get ready for Fall.  It's still hot outside and I try not to wish away the time, but I just love fall so much that it's hard to wait!  We will be moving in a few weeks to our new house, so it's not time to decorate for fall just yet here.  Instead I decided to work on a few crafts this weekend to get ready for our new house (it was way more fun than packing!)

A few weeks ago Michaels had all of their canvases on sale, so I stopped to see what I could find.  I debated about a few different kinds, but ended up getting 7 11x14" canvases for $12!  So this weekend I found uses for a few.

This was the first thing I knew I wanted to make.  It's based on this pin that I found on pinterest and seemed like something I could do.  I bought some stickers to help paint the words on.  My favorite way to paint it to paint a couple of base coats of one color, let them dry and then put stickers on to spell out whatever I want, then I paint over them a couple coats of the main color.  Then I let it dry and peel the stickers off!  So I painted the orange on this canvas, but then when I started putting my stickers down they were a little too big to fit the whole words, so I had to pause on this canvas.  We made it to the store later in the weekend so I was able to finish this one last.  

I also took an idea from this post about how to get crisp lines when painting.  She suggested painting over the stickers (or vinyl or contact paper like she used) with mod podge and letting that dry before the final layers of paint.  This helps keep the paint from seeping under the stickers, etc.  And it seemed to work pretty well!

 When I took a pause from the first canvas, I started playing around with the stickers I had bought for that one.  I still really liked them and since I already had out the letters for "thankful" I decided to try out give thanks.  I loved the way it looked so I set to work on that canvas.  I used the same technique with that part and then after the blue paint dried I used stencils for the "In All Things"

And the first weekend of college football always gets me really excited.  I was searching Pinterest for ideas for flags for our front yard and I came across this cute sign and thought I could make something like it.  I used masking tape to try to keep my lines separated easily.  I traced the football onto the canvas first and taped around it.  Then I painted the top yellow.  Once it dried I used dot labels and painted over with the green to make the polka dots.  On the bottom I used masking tape to mark off the white part and painted over red for the chevron.  Lastly I painted the football and used stencils for the words.

I'm really happy with how all of these turned out.  They are nowhere near perfect, but I know I will have a lot of fun displaying them in our new house!